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Most of the time the problem you describe is caused by your security tools either being misconfigured or clashing with one another. You've got two heavy ones to begin with--Norton Internet Security and Earthlink's Total Access package. I'm more familiar with the latter as i had it installed until a year or so ago.

All those blockers--ad-blocker, scam blocker, popup blocker (PUB), etc., put restrictions on Internet Explorer and how it works. Especially third party PUB's can cause more problems than they solve and if they were installed and enabled when you installed IE7, they could be why you had trouble with it.

Most of these third party blockers you don't really need if you use some common sense. For example, I tried out an ad-blocker and it slowed my surfing way down, which I can't afford being on dialup. Ads are only sometimes dangerous but only if you click on them. Plus, the economic realities of the web now is that most sites need to display ads to pay for costs.

I had problems with Earthlink's PUB which weren't resolved until Total Access was uninstalled from my system. Plus TA is not required to use Eathlink's service. TA has some nice features but I found it more trouble than what it was worth. As far as the PUB, I notice you have two versions of Earthlink's, which I haven't ween before and doubt if is suppoed to be that way. Looks like sloppy update practice by Earthlink or a corruption of TA.

I kind of doubt that the PUB is causing your homepage to be stuck on a blank page tho. That sounds more like a homepage lock and I would check Norton's configuration as well--if you have any options to lock your homepage in either Norton or TA, disable and let me know if that helps.

One easy workaround to all this is to use a different browser, such as Firefox or Opera. They have their own builtin PUB's and are more secure so don't need all the stuff that is designed to secure IE.

In short I would look into uninstalling Total Access. I wouldn't do it right away, but when you do be sure to disable all the blockers first. Let's run some scans and see if there is any malware hanging around that HJT doesn't see, then when we find the source of the problem we can see what we can do to get IE7 installed and working properly.

First, please follow the instructions in your other thread for updating Java and clearing it's cache in safe mode. Then also install and run a scan with SUPERAntiSypware following the instructions also in that thread.

Adware.Tracking Cookie C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@revsci[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@sec1.liveperson[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@www.googleadservices[2].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@ads.adbrite[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@rb4.worldsex[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@enterprise.clickdefense[2].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@ad.interclick[2].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@doubleclick[2].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@tracking.foxnews[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@www5.addfreestats[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@www.googleadservices[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@m1.webstats.motigo[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@sales.liveperson[3].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@statse.webtrendslive[2].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@itxt.vibrantmedia[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@ads.realtechnetwork[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@warlog[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@sales.liveperson[2].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@ads.realtechnetwork[3].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@sales.liveperson[4].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@ads.revsci[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@precisionclick[2].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@sales.liveperson[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@ads.cartoonnetwork[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@atdmt[1].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@www.mediarevenue[2].txt C:\Documents and Settings\William\cookies\william@3.adbrite[1].txt

Deckard's System Scanner v20070611.50Run by William on 2007-06-30 at 19:44:33Computer is in Normal Mode.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Could you share what exactly you did in Norton to correct your problem? It might help someone else down the line.

Nothing else for me to do. If you want to try installing IE7 again, as I mentioned before, if it were me, I would uninstall Norton and Earthlink and anything else that hooks into it to keep an eye on it.

Also I can tell that you don't really want a software firewall, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't recommend that you use one. With a little work you can configure it so it won't affect game-play. There is some pretty sophisticated nasty stuff out there now and knowing when packets are being sent out can save you some big headaches.

One other thing I recommend is to install SpywareBlaster. It doesn't affect performance at all since it doesn't run in the background and along with your other security tools that you have on board you will be in good shape.

Links to it and Secunia Software Inspector, which I also highly recommend, along with some other tips can be found here:

My current solution to the browser not working issue is to disable Norton Internet Security. The symantec site suggested downloading and installing the latest version of Norton Internet Security. 47mb and I am on dial-up. That can wait until I get to work and can access the DS3.